Indiana House Passes Amended HJR-3

The House Tuesday approved the amended version of HJR-3, the proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage.

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Listen to Brandon Smith's story about the House passage of HJR-3.

The House voted Monday to alter HJR-3, taking out the measure’s controversial second sentence banning civil unions. That version of the amendment passed the House by a comfortable margin Tuesday, 57 to 40.

The change also restarts the ratification process, potentially putting it on the ballot in 2016, instead of this fall.

“Fact is, we have not dismantled this bomb,” Pelath said. “We’ve simply placed a longer fuse on it before it detonates in all of our faces.”

Cicero Republican Representative Eric Turner, the measure’s author, says even without the second sentence, HJR-3 is necessary to protect the state’s existing statute defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

“We know from experience that states without constitutional protection run the risk of a state court changing the will of the people, the will of the legislature,” Turner said.

The amended version of HJR-3 now heads to the Senate, where the second sentence could be reinserted.

Related Content

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers Monday voted to remove a portion of HJR-3, the proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. The change would also restart the ratification process.

Many of the same faces, much of the same testimony, but a different result – a House committee Wednesday approved the proposed constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage.

The House Judiciary Committee last week took more than three hours of testimony on the proposed amendment known as HJR-3. But that committee did not take a vote, and after concerns arose that it would not pass the committee, House Speaker Brian Bosma reassigned HJR-3 to the House Elections Committee.